Many people live in apartments

Many people (in America) live in apartments, and we do not choose our thermostats, refrigerators, washing machines, and other large appliances. The apartment comes partially furnished. So many of us have no opportunity to practice the advice "don't buy internet connected devices." Our apartment manager will have bought these devices. Maybe they even spy on us.

I don't want Google to be pinged every time I enter my front door, cook an egg or flush the toilet. I don't want my family to be logged as they enter and leave, gather in the dining room or go to bed. My thermostat, refrigerator and smoke alarm function perfectly as dumb devices. My mundane private life is mine and private.

Of course they spy on Representatives and Senators

Of course they spy on Representatives and Senators, as reps and senators often have shady foreign contacts.

Congresspeople over the years have shown to be in contact with numerous terrorist groups, including those in overthrowing Georgia, infiltrating Iran, and various Palestinians. Also contacts with members of Israel's military and security services.

This is a short list of obvious reasons NSA would target Congresspeople.

Property rights in space

UN doesn't matter. The situation is the same as taking a fish from the open ocean (the commons). You do own your labor, and when you fish, you inextricably mix your labor with the natural object, and it becomes yours. See John Locke on the natural right to property, and how ownership of a natural object from the commons is established by mixing your labor with the object.

Successful packet bidding strategies?

Would you need to bid for and win ALL (or most of) the packets of a long message to understand the whole message? It may not work to only have access to a small percentage of the packets that make up a message.

Maybe if you know beforehand that a bank sends its messages at 10am exactly, and you could bid for all the packets at that instant, at a particular junction, and win all the packets of a single message. (a timing attack)

The article suggests traffic can be "diverted" simply by having a successful bidding strategy at internet router junctions. If you know exactly when the packets are coming, a fast computer could bid and win the packets you want.

Secure email

There are several open source and private projects using javascript to encode forms in pgp in the browser, so your form content is encrypted before the form is sent. It gets decrypted at the other end. For example:

http://openpgpjs.org/

and

http://www.hanewin.net/encrypt/

Also http://tectite.com offers an encoder product that you use in conjunction with the browser's https encryption. You use https to send forms from the browser to the server, then encode with tectite encoder at the server and send to an email box (where the person has the tectite decoder.)

Both these solutions provide end-to-end encryption of form data. So email in the browser (which is usually sent as a form) can be protected by strong encryption in ways lavabit and others do not offer. Both of these solutions are used for credit card data, hippa compliance, and other secure email.

Abandoning the Mouse

Apple brought the mouse into the world, and Apple is taking it out!

They are not dumbing down the software, they are removing those functions which cannot be done on the touch screen. You can't hover, you can't multiple select, etc with finger painting tools, you need a mouse. (double-tap is not catching on). So this is the end of the mouse, and only touch functions will be allowed in Apple software.

(Yes I know the mouse is from Xerox originally, but Apple commercialized it.)

Fiction?

Wonder if these books include Coke and burger product placements? Does the mother cook a home meal? Does Dad barbeque in the back yard? Do the kids play athletic outdoor games while waiting for their healthy meal?

What about giving away a vegetarian-themed book? Or even a book about the real lives of cows and pigs?

Re: not over till the fat lady sings

I have a website client still in IE6 because of Server 2003. A large Department of a mid-Atlantic state does not upgrade its servers very often. Even when new servers are bought, the new ones do the new stuff, while the old ones keep delivering the old stuff.

Key here is that (in the US) the D&B and LexNex databases are used to authenticate business clients before deals, and that banks use the data to vet businesses and individuals for lines of credit and before underwriting business deals. A common phrase before a deal is, "send us your D&B."

The stolen database info allows 3rd parties to pose as authenticated and trustworthy business partners, and to pose as creditworthy banking clients.

The proprietary cloud companies are just trying to get the usual lock-in. Once we get all your data in our cloud, it will be too hard to switch. We've seen this act several times over the past 25 years, and it works for awhile, despite all the resentment.

Consent of the governed requires information

To add one more point to your excellent post, if you believe our governments derive their just power from the consent of the governed, keep in mind that consent is not valid without information. Misinformation and lack of information render the consent of the governed impossible.

Hire a mathematician

There are other methods of crypto than public key/private key systems. Everyone is so focused on these methods, but alternatives exist and not every method depends on prime number factors and such. Everyone focused on key lengths and large primes could be searching down the wrong lane. Lots of ways to keep secrets.

Help us spy on you

Right now researchers are working on ways to anonymize data. DARPA wants to be sure they can de-anonymize the data, and what better way than to have an inside line on how it will be anonymized in the first place.

Also plenty of big data has been available for years, but until now, was not seen as a danger. Phone books, mailing lists, census data, auto and license lists, and on and on. It isn't the data that has them worried, it is the anonymizing.

informative enough

I'm happy to read an article like this to learn how one company does what it does. I don't read the article as saying this is the best or only way. I appreciate the different perspectives. One should always read articles like this with a critical eye.

A lot must depend on how many ad bidders this user typically has, how many ad spaces to fill per unit time, etc., which the author didn't get into. If there is lots of variability in the number of requests and lots of bidders for each request, this will require different hardware/software solutions than if there was typically one or two bidders and a steady flow of requests. If he found that disk drive access times and database access times were the bottlenecks, this might be good to know, along with his (current) solution.

Re: Google worries me - About GeoLocation

Easy to find your approximate location, for majority of users. Almost anyone (in usa especially) can be geolocated from their IP address - anyone who has a large commercial ISP can be easily geolocated as close as town and even city block, at least in the USA. Try these services at GeoBytes as an example - it pinpoints me to within 3 miles or so.

Rural America not totally abandoned

Article mentions, "Meanwhile their rural counterparts remain locked in a lottery of ageing copper which no-one is ever planning to upgrade - and which would probably be left to rot if it weren't for universal-service obligations."

The aging copper is worthless for rural internet connectivity, and anyone in business on the internet in rural America has a satellite connection, for example from Hughes. I've seen it in action, it's not as fast as cable, about equal to wireless (like Sprint or Clearwire) and vastly superior to telephone dial-up. Rural satellite service is costly, and also fragile, going down in storms, snow, etc., but it is a business necessity.

665.999...

Conservation laws are already gone

Conservation laws are already gone - See Hawking radiation - quantum uncertainty creates particle pairs, one disappears down the black hole while the other does not - matter is being "created" from the vacuum. Something from nothing. With enough time, whole universes could be built.

Now if we could just extract Casimir particles of choice, say, carbon atoms, we could be creating oil for our cars. Maybe build our own Star Trek replicators.

Why buy a Rolls when a Mini will do?

Why buy a Rolls when a Mini will do? The attack on Apple for pitching a high-end product is misplaced, as many companies pitch their products to the high end, engendering fierce brand loyalty and apparently insane consumer behavior on otherwise normal people. Gotta have Sketchers and not some cheap shoe? Gotta wear chanel and not some cheap brand of perfume? and it goes on and on.

Not so silent

Much Useless Data

Much of the petabytes of data being gathered and stored everyday will never get analyzed, and will grow old and stale. Yes there are retrospective studies, but very few, and retrospective studies are generally not hurried. Real-time users want the data that is about current times analyzed right now, else it cannot be used for immediate decision-making.

Another problem is many users who might use certain datasets never will use them, first because they don't know the datasets exist, and second because the datasets are controlled by some other company, or cost too much to buy rights to analyze.

There are a number of factors leading to a trend of diminishing returns for larger datasets. The next move will be to "focused" data gathering, with a business justification of making immediate decisions.

Similar diagnosing software exists

Quote: "...generates a Bayesian ranked differential diagnosis based on signs, symptoms, laboratory tests, country of origin and incubation period - and can be used for diagnosis support and simulation of all infectious diseases in all countries."

So GIDEON doesn't give a single answer like on Jeopardy, but a ranked list, which the infectious disease specialist uses as an aid to diagnosis.

Compare to Basic Books v Kinko's Copies

A very similar example, the publishers won, see Basic Books, Inc. v. Kinko's Graphics Corporation

http://www.copyright.com/Services/CorporateGuide/photocopies_copy.htm

says:

"In 1991, eight book publishers sued Kinko’s Graphics Corporation for copyright infringement. The suit alleged that, in photocopying copyright-protected materials to create university course packs, Kinko’s infringed on the publishers’ copyrights. Kinko’s unauthorized copying covered a wide range of materials, including text, trade and professional books. Kinko’s argued “fair use,” but the court disagreed. All told, Kinko’s paid almost $2 million in damages, fees and other costs. "

This lawsuit drove Kinko's out of the student and university marketplace. Some university copy centers continued the practice (claiming to be non-profit) but in most cases, professors had to cease using such course packets, and students were required to purchase whole books, not copied excerpts. With regard to out of print books, no option remained, and it was a total loss for the students and profs.

Start working on your resume

Prices lower in the west and south

The Compact 2 Volume edition with case is less that $50 on ebay (used), several are $75, several more for $150, all on Buy It Now. At that price, I wouldn't use it for toilet paper, but it is pretty cheap. The shipping is what'll getcha!

Pay for it and have commercials?

You know there would be commercials, too. So it would be like the cable tv deal, oh it may be commercial free, for a while, then later you would have both commercials and pay for it. Then no-skip commercials. Then a show cut by a few minutes, plus more no-skip commercials. We've seen this model before. Count me out, I'll be at the library reading Dostoevsky or Vonnegut.

Holey Swiss Cheese, Batman!

I met Boson Higgs whilst serving on HMS Hadron, a charming mate of relatively great mass, who had a strange attraction to doughnut holes. Torus to bits laughing as he lepton the beam amidships and was accelerated rapidly to sea, landing in a black hole nearby the 7th planet.

Archimedes would be proud!

Humans are not Mendelian pea plants

"There is not one clear genetic signifier for most serious diseases, as the industry appeared to promise."

This should also undermine those people who argue that one or two genes underlie criminal behavior, or genius, or artistry, or whatever fad of the day is being said to be genetic. Funny, but it turns out to be more complicated than the simplistic "criminal gene" or "genius gene" - surprise! Nature and biology are complex! Humans are not Mendelian pea plants - most traits are combinations of lots of genes (and nurture too!)

Not big enough?

They're not going to implant rabbit tissue in disfunctional human male variable-volume gene delivery systems. What human male wants a rabbit-sized erection? I know, I know, rabbit tissue is only for rabbits. We're not talking about cross-species sex organ implantation, as silicone-filled acetate sacks are bad enough. "Breeding like rabbits" would take on a whole new meaning.